Natalie Foster, President and Co-founder of Economic Security Project: Making the Case for a New Economic Paradigm

Van Ton-Quinlivan

Hello, I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan CEO of Futuro Health, welcoming you to WorkforceRx, where I interview leaders and innovators for insights into creating a future-ready workforce.

According to recent US Census data, more than one in three American households have difficulty paying the usual household expenses, a number that has climbed in recent years. Improving this break reality is a focus of my guest today, Natalie Foster, president and co-founder of Economic Security Project and author of the new book, The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy.

I recently attended a talk by Natalie and was intrigued by the case she lays out for greater government intervention in healthcare, higher education, housing, employment, and establishing an income floor.

I’m happy to welcome you to the podcast, Natalie, so we can all learn more about the shifts you’d like to see in economic policy and what they would mean for the country. Thanks very much for joining us today.

Natalie Foster

Thank you for having me, Van. I’m really honored.

Van

Delighted. Well, let’s start with the basics. Can you give us an overview of your new book, The Guarantee?

Natalie

Absolutely. It is arguing that we should have an economic floor in America, one that no one can fall below, regardless of their race, religion, or zip code. In the richest nation on earth, in the richest moment in history, we could guarantee health care and housing and family care. We could guarantee higher education. We can guarantee an inheritance and income and good work. This is possible to do. We have models around the country already happening. I point out there are so many guarantees across the board for other parts of the economy. There are guarantees for businesses, you know, the guarantee of patents and the court system. And so I’m arguing we should extend those guarantees to the everyday people who make up the American economy and create its value.

Van

That is a bold statement and it sounds too good to be true, Natalie. But in your book, you chronicle the work of activists and advocates who’ve laid the groundwork for the kinds of change you’d like to see and you actually saw some of it come to fruition in the pandemic, I understand. I’d love to hear some of these examples.

Natalie
Well, let me start with the story of a young student in the Stanford Library who was sitting there reading Dr. King’s last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? And this young student would take notes in the margins where Dr. King talked about a guaranteed minimum income. His name was Michael Tubbs.

He would take that dog-eared book with him to the Stockton City Hall where he became one of the youngest mayors in American history. He and I met around that time and I’d been very interested in a guaranteed income and so had he. And he became one of the first to demonstrate this idea, one of the first in the country to say we could guarantee an economic floor for people and I’m going to show how it would work.

So, there were 125 families in Stockton, California that received $500 a month with no strings attached. They still had their jobs, they made their wages, and these checks came every month. They could count on it. Around this time, it was happening in Jackson, Mississippi with Dr. Aisha Nyandoro through a program she called the Magnolia Mother’s Trust.

It would be Mayor Tubbs and Dr. Nyandoro who would ignite this idea of a guaranteed income and we have seen pilots and cities pick up the torch and demonstrate what it looks like to create an income floor for families. The data is clear that when families have this kind of economic security that they are less stressed, their wellbeing is significantly improved. Doctors visits — things like going to the dentist and going to the doctor — they go up. Birth rates, they go up. And people are able to find full-time work at higher rates than people who don’t receive the checks.

So when the pandemic hit, one of the first tools that lawmakers reached for was giving families a check through things like the expanded Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit and stimulus checks. Just like Mayor Michael Tubbs and Aisha Nyandoro had been doing years before, it was proven that it was true. So we now have a national pilot and a blueprint for what it looks like to reduce poverty and create an income floor and the stability that comes along with that for families.

Van

Well, interestingly enough, Natalie, just yesterday I saw an article come out about the community college in Los Angeles that just announced a program where there’s guaranteed income paired with education to become a healthcare worker if you’re willing to go into healthcare. So it sounds like the ideas that you’ve been advocating are germinating in multiple places. Thank you for sharing all the evidence.

Natalie

Yeah, absolutely. I think it’s really inspiring to see different communities pick up the idea. And I’d love to see and hear more from the workforce training communities, like you’re saying, to inspire more young people to move into those jobs that we know are the jobs of the future. We’re also seeing communities like the foster care communities — so young people who are leaving foster care — receiving a guaranteed income over the course of a few years to help stabilize their lives. Or people recently returning from prison who are figuring out how to make life again in society…a guaranteed income supports them. And there’s a lot of different organizations running pilots to show what it would mean in people’s lives. Same with immigrant families. And so I’m excited to see where those communities take this work.

Van

Well, Natalie, as you know, every innovative idea or out-of-the-box idea has a long line of critics so I was wondering what the strongest arguments against this approach would be, and what’s your response to the critique that this approach is akin to socialism?

Natalie

Well, I consider the guarantees — or an economy that is focused on human flourishing and creating a floor — to be an evolution of American capitalism. It is the evolution of American capitalism that’s needed if we are truly to tap into the genius that exists in this country, all over this country, but is unevenly tapped because opportunity in America is uneven. The ability to go to get a college degree or start a business, that is deeply uneven. It is only those who have resources who are able to do those kinds of things and we can shift that if we as a society decide that’s important.

And frankly, we as a nation have done this before. It’s really only the last fifty years of American capitalism that you can frame up as sort of trickle-down economics that have been so focused on people’s individual ability to create the American dream sort of on their own. In the past, after the World War II during Roosevelt’s time, we were able to build societies and economies that supported families and built an American middle class. You know, we did it in a way that largely benefited white families and so I think there’s a real opportunity now to do it in a way that benefits all families, regardless of their race, religion, or zip code, and that that’s the way we build a multiracial democracy in America.

Van

What do you think can be done over the next few years given the political realities of the changing administration and the changing control of the Senate?

Natalie

Yeah, I think it’s a really complicated time right now. I mean, we certainly have the changing of the guard politically, but we also have the clearest data yet of what people have been telling us for years, that they don’t like the status quo, that the status quo is not working for them. And I think this was a referendum not on the last four years, but on the last 40 years of trickle-down economics and an economy that left us brittle, broke, in debt and has really pushed our democracy to the brink. People are working incredibly hard in this country for very low wages and that is a choice that we make as a nation.

I think a real challenge is that we tend to think of the economy like the weather — something that just happens to us — and instead, we need to think of the economy as a set of decisions that we make every step of the way. And so voters said, “I don’t like this economy. It’s not working for me.” I hope politicians of every stripe heed that call for something that works for working families.

That said, I think that there’s a real opportunity to continue to build in the states. States after states are really continuing to pursue innovative strategies. In Minnesota, we’ve seen one of the most generous expanded child tax credits in the country. We’ve seen guaranteed school lunch in states like Minnesota. In the state of New Mexico, there’s a guarantee of child care. It’s actually in the state’s constitution that children should have access to early learning and child care from the ages zero to five. Right? This supports work in New Mexico, as well as the future generations.

So, states are leading the way, and I’m hopeful that over the next few years, even if nothing happens federally, that we can look to states and cities for the bright spots in models that show how we create an economic floor for families.

Van

Is there an experiment at the state level that you’d like to see that can inform policy and its impact on the labor market?

Natalie

Yeah, well, one that I’m really interested in — and I’d love to hear what you think about how this would impact the labor market from your perspective —  is in Washington state. One of the real challenges is that childcare, long-term care, and care in general, is incredibly unaffordable. It’s unaffordable for the families who hire caregivers, and the wages are not high enough for caregivers to be able to feed their own families. So wages have to go up, but families have to be able to afford this. That is a broken market. If left entirely to the private market, we will never get to where we need to be as a nation and we will be losing out on so much creativity and ingenuity and frankly, economic growth that comes from the stability of American families.

And so one of the models is in Washington state where they’ve set up a social insurance program that workers pay a small fee into each month. When it comes time for someone to need long-term care — a loved one or themselves — you’re able to pull out of the Social Insurance Fund the money to support the long-term care needs. It’s called Washington Cares, and it is just getting up and started. And what’s exciting about it is that this year on the ballot, a billionaire tried to squash it. He didn’t like the new taxes that were created in Washington state and put it on the ballot and the people of Washington backed it. They said, this is exactly the type of stability and guarantee that we need moving forward. And that is a model that I could see scaling across the nation. That’s actually how so much of our policy innovations have happened. They’ve started in states and then they scaled across the country.

But I think if everyone knew they had the certainty of long-term care, if they didn’t stay awake at night worrying how they were going to take care of their parents, they didn’t stay awake at night worrying what would happen to them or a loved one, that it would free up space for the work that needs to happen right here and now and allow people to continue doing the work they want to do while knowing their loved ones are taken care of. I think that would really impact the labor market, but I’m curious what you think, Van.

Van

Well, that’s going to be a great experiment and especially that labor market for low wage care workers have been highly dependent on the immigrant workforce. I think all of our families will be looking around to see where would I be able to find a caregiver? So, I’m looking forward to tracking this.

Natalie

And to the point you’re making about the workforce, caregiving is a job that is very future-proof. We know that care is a growth industry and could be the largest occupation in America by 2040 by some estimates. So, it’s incredibly important that these jobs are good jobs and that caregivers are supported and that families can find care to be able to support their loved ones in the midst of all that happens in life.

Van

Now, when we first opened, you talked about other systems or other stakeholders already having guarantees, such as in the form of patent systems and shareholder liability protection and other measures. I would love for you to just elaborate on where there are other forms of economic guarantees that you’re suggesting we expand to the workers.

Natalie

Yeah, I just think when you look around, there’s so much certainty for businesses and they need it to be able to take risks and build and try new things and continue to have that innovative edge that I think we all want to see in American entrepreneurialism. But you have to know as a shareholder that you’re not going to be held personally responsible for any malfeasance by the company. We have a guarantee for shareholders to know that that will be true. There are systems set up to guarantee the monetary system so that it’s stable. An entire central bank is focusing on the stability of our currency. So guarantees are really important to how we do business.

They’re equally as important to American families. Now, if you are lucky enough to be born into a family with resources, you have a lot of these guarantees and it’s easy to take for granted what it means for a family to have to go bankrupt to deal with a cancer treatment, right? That is the American way today. It was not the American way 100 years ago, and it does not have to be the American way in the future. I believe there is a way that we can reorient our economy to support families so that we can continue this path of economic growth and creativity that we’ve been on, frankly.

And the one other thing I want to say here, Van, is that in the pandemic, we invested in families and we have basically an A-B test. Other nations, wealthy nations, that did not invest as heavily in their families have had a much slower recovery than the United States has. In some ways, our recovery is the envy of the world and I really believe it is because we invested in families, in our businesses, and we made sure that people could have stability through one of the most difficult times of the modern era and our recovery rate responded.

Van

What are the signs that you see that we’re entering a new economic paradigm and where are you seeing momentum, Natalie?

Natalie

I really think that everything from this last election to Brexit to the unrest around the country and around the world, shows that the old economic paradigm of trickle-down economics has left families broke and in debt and in need of a new paradigm and that we’re sort of in the interregnum, right? The question is, what will come next? I think the election of Donald Trump, and frankly, I think the ascension of somebody like Bernie Sanders on the left, those are all candidates that we hadn’t seen prior to this moment in history. You know, the presidents had all looked much more similar and had governed in a very similar way, and there’s been a break with that.

You see it as people are in the streets right now telling their heartbreaking stories of what health insurance has meant to them, how health insurance companies have really hurt them and their families. That is a current social media trend right now that just shows the angst and anger that people have. So that’s how I know we’re at the end of one economic paradigm and about to begin a new one.

Gary Gerstle has written a great book on this topic called The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order tracking how prior to Ronald Reagan, there was a very different governance system and very likely, post Obama, there is another very different governance system. But sometimes it’s hard to see history when you’re in the middle of it. And I do think that is where we are.

But, you know, over the past few years, we’ve seen government taking a much more active role in shaping the economy, saying we want to be a leader in clean tech. We’re going to go build factories right here on American soil to manufacture chips. It’s a national security issue, but it’s also a jobs issue, and we are going to pass huge, significant legislation to push and nudge the private market in that direction. That is a big shift from how economic policymaking has played out over the last fifty years.

Van

Now, talk to me about your personal story. How did you come to think about and support guaranteed income and write a book calling for the next American economy?

Natalie

Well, I grew up the daughter of a preacher in Kansas and my childhood was one really focused on love and loving our neighbor and service and, you know, just working to make people’s lives a little bit better. When I got to college, a thinker came through, Cornell West actually, and he said something that’s always stuck with me, which was, justice is what love looks like in public. That love doesn’t have to just live in the individual acts of service, but love can be reflected in our tax code and in the policies we choose to pass in this country, whether we expand the child tax credit or whether we let families fend for themselves, right? That that is justice. And so I really focused my life and work in that direction.

And frankly, this book I wrote is one I needed to read! You know, this work can be hard and at times it can feel like, man, is this really even going anywhere? Is this really shifting? Particularly if you’re thinking about paradigm work. How do we shift a paradigm? And then I looked around and the progress we’d made that I spoke of earlier — with Mayor Michael Tubbs and Dr. Aisha Nyandoro in the guaranteed income world — the progress we’d made was not just guaranteed income.

It was the guarantee of healthcare and activists like Tara Raghuveer out of Kansas City, who has built a whole tenants union focused nationally on how we could guarantee homes in America. That it was the fight for debt-free college education. There was a time in American history when high school cost money. We changed our policy. We shifted. We said it should be a public good for every high school student. So we can do that with higher education.  People don’t have to go into debt $100,000, $200,000 just to graduate with that ball and chain around their neck. It can be something that we guarantee.

So, I realized the progress was happening in so many other places and if you put it together, it is a paradigm shift toward a different kind of economy. I needed to write that down. I needed to read that. I needed that injection of hope and I figured others did, too.

Van

Well, let’s close out by having you give us some advice. What are your insights for navigating the pain experienced as the economy shifts, as the paradigm shifts. I mean, all the rules get jumbled up and remade. So to the average listener out there, what advice do you have for them?

Natalie

That’s a really important question. How do we navigate the pain?  I think one thing that has always stuck with me is that we can’t navigate the pain of transition alone. That so much of the answer lies in community and our connection to one another.  If you are somebody who believes we need to remake the American economy so that it works for working families again, then join an organization. Don’t try and do it alone by posting screeds late at night on TikTok or on Facebook. That is not where we need to go. Instead, we have to come together. in organizations. Find your political home, your organizing home and work together with people because that’s the only way that change has been made in this country.

Van

Thank you very much for joining us, Natalie. We so enjoyed having you on this podcast to inspire us with your ideas, but also to remind us about our history and the possibilities in the future. Thanks for coming today.

Natalie

Thank you, Van. I really appreciate being here and thinking through how the guarantees could impact the American workforce. So, thanks for all of your work.

Van

I’m Van Ton-Quinlivan with Futuro Health. Thanks for checking out this episode of WorkforceRx. I hope you will join us again as we continue to explore how to create a future-focused workforce in America.